The Albanese government has agreed to amend its industrial relations bill as it tries to alleviate business concerns about workplaces getting roped into multi-employer pay deals.
Labor hopes to get its workplace package, including enshrining the principle of gender pay equity, through the Senate by the end of the year amid intense political pressure about the rising cost of living.
But the plans to expand the use of pay deals across multiple workplaces have attracted pushback from business groups and sparked Coalition warnings that disruptive strikes will increase.
The federal workplace relations minister, Tony Burke, revealed the concession on Sunday after a week of intensive talks with business groups.
“One of the ones that we’ve now locked down is a change in how voting will work on multi-employer agreements,” Burke told Sky News on the eve of parliament resuming.
Labor would address the “reasonable concern” that the votes of employees in a much bigger workplace might “overwhelm” the vote of a much smaller workplace if there was a combined vote on multi-employer bargaining.
Burke said the bill would be amended to count any votes employer by employer, including on whether to pursue multi-employer agreement, launch industrial action and approve the final agreement.
“This puts an end to the argument that you’ll end up with workplaces that didn’t want to be part of an agreement but somehow got roped in anyway – or didn’t want to be part of industrial action,” he said. “If you vote against any of the stages at that business level, then you’re not part of it.”
Burke confirmed reports the government was considering a grace period of six months to allow for negotiations prior to multi-employer bargaining being initiated.
But he sounded reluctant to commit to a business proposal to raise the threshold for multi-employer bargaining from firms with 15 workers to firms with 100 workers.
Burke said he would not move that amendment in the lower house, but it would likely be a “conversation” when the bill reached the Senate. He reiterated he wanted to “get wages moving for everybody”.
He also joined the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, in hitting back at a threat by an employer group to launch a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign against the bill.
Burke said the organisation that had threatened the campaign – the Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association – had not contacted him.
He questioned whether the group’s membership wanted to pay for “a political campaign”.
The independent MP for the Western Australian seat of Curtin, Kate Chaney, told the ABC’s Insiders program she supported the expansion of multi-employer bargaining in sectors such as childcare and aged care.
But she was concerned that some parts of the bill were an “overreach” and said there was still uncertainty about the definition of “common interest” across multiple workplaces.
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, told Sky News the newly announced concessions were “baby steps”.
Littleproud said increasing union rights “might get [you] a sugar hit as an employee, but ultimately you’re going to pay more, either without a job or more at the checkout”.
